In order to encourage decision makers to specify their preferences regarding different objectives in a multi-objective optimization problem and assist them in choosing a solution under uncertainty, the concept of weights and their robustness was introduced. This concept is essential for the decision maker to understand the nature of the selected solution and may lead the decision maker to better understand the compromise associated with the solution. In practice, many of the existing methods are based on the usage of a utility function that combines all the objectives, with their corresponding weights, into one function. However, it has been argued that such approaches suffer from lack of understanding of the weights concept by the decision makers, since the notion of weights in use is often too complex and even counter-intuitive.
The foregoing examples of the related art and limitations related therewith are intended to be illustrative and not exclusive. Other limitations of the related art will become apparent to those of skill in the art upon a reading of the specification and a study of the figures.